Deathwatch - Final

by Lisa Mannetti

  Beneath my focused, careful fingers I sensed/heard the faintly wet thrip and felt both the tiny poke of the needle, and, as I twisted my wrist, the corresponding minute catch in the living flesh. Ellie was alive. Her father and I had saved her. And her twin might dance and twirl and run in meadows when the autumn grass was waist high, wheat brown. But never….

  I glanced down at the oval crossection of her thigh, so like a dark, oozy depression in the rotted hollow of some ancient stricken tree. I was tucking the ugly envelope of skin around her wide stump, closing the wound…but never, I thought. She would never walk.

  - 12 -

  It was a week later; Ellie was drifting in and out of consciousness because Andrew and I were keeping her dosed to the eyeballs on painkillers. I do not think at that point she even knew her leg was gone. But, for a moment, if you will, imagine waking to that knowledge. Remember, if you can, the dreams—both simple and complex—you sheltered in your heart as a child. Did you see yourself magically made pretty? Think you’d be taken into the neighborhood club? Or suddenly liked where you’d been scorned? Getting even? Becoming rich? Famous? The dreams of days of promise. Remembering those moments, imagine being a freak for the brief twelve years you slept in your bed, ate breakfasts, fought with your brothers and sisters, breathed.

  Ellie had been afraid of having the surgery, but I know a part of her dreamed of being set free—so imagine her reaction when she woke—and found herself worse off. Yes, worse off. Because when she was tied to Abby she had Abby— a sister exactly like her self. She had another living human being who shared her life and her pain. But now she was a cripple—crippled and alone.

  ***

  It was nearly midnight, when I looked in on my patient. Ruth was sitting nearby nursing Ellie; alongside the older woman’s knee there was a knitting bag disgorging the woolly bulge of a partly completed sweater, and on the doctor’s narrow wooden sofa table, a thick black bound Bible.

  “She’s asleep,” Ruth whispered, answering my unspoken question when she heard my footsteps outside the office door. “Poor thing, she doesn’t know what she’ll wake to.”

  I nodded somberly, watched Ruth get up to dampen Ellie’s brow; she was wringing the sponge, the water tinkled softly in the basin.

  “We saved her, though,” I said coming into the room, my eyes adjusting to the dim yellow glow of the shaded kerosene lamp. I found myself idling over the open page of Ruth’s book.

  “Yes, I know that, Stuart.” She pointed with her thick chin toward the Bible. “But I just can’t seem to get it straight in my heart. Don’t understand at all why the Lord would make a child suffer so. An innocent child.”

  “Yes,” I said. I lit a cigarette. There wasn’t any rhyme or reason to what had happened.

  “I know all about what those Orientals believe, karma and such. And I tried to get my mind around it,” she said, softly moving the brown puff of the sponge over the girl’s cheeks. “But there’s no sense to it. None. Don’t care about past lives and all that truck. Even if that stuff’s true as dirt, nobody deserves to come round again having to cope with more than Jesus himself up on the cross.”

  “And did you find the answer here?” I asked, tapping the thin onion skin of the page with my index finger.

  “Nope. Maybe I didn’t really expect to. My heart was just so full, and I thought to ease it with something I’d grown up with—old words are comforting at times. Or maybe I’m just trying to do what I always done—take care of Ellie and Abby so as to make up for my own past.”

  She averted her eyes, I wanted to ask her what she meant, but found I didn’t have the nerve. I toyed with the thin pages of the book, not wanting to look at her or Ellie.

  “Regina never cared a damn for anyone—she only thought of herself, you know,” Ruth said. “After she killed herself, I tried to understand that, too.” Her closed fist tapped the center of her bony chest just over the place where her heart lay. “But I couldn’t. I’m plain enough—the young men of Poughkeepsie used to joke that my body was all right, but my face could stop the court house clock. But Regina…she was so beautiful…physically beautiful.” She sighed, then went on. “Like I told you, I’m not an educated woman. I’m not even a smart woman, but I went out and I bought a copy of that there Frenchman’s book, Emma Bovine—”

  “Bovary,” I corrected automatically.

  Ruth nodded and in the low light, I saw the yellow flare of the kerosene lamp reflecting in her spectacles. Her voice was sad, I thought. “I heard tell on it at the Vassar College library, and I thought that was maybe like her—driven, living with a man she didn’t want, so frustrated she’d destroy her own life to get what she thought she needed.”

  “It’s a brilliant book,” I said evenly.

  “Yes and it’s just as real as real. But that kind of knowing—it’s just like the Bible, Stuart,” she indicated the heavy black bound book. “It changes nothing.”

  “Ruth,” I began, but she cut me off.

  “Regina’s here in the house!” Her hand went up as if she were taking oath in a courtroom. “I’ve looked in at the twins many a night, gone in to make tucks and kiss their foreheads, and I’ve smelled that bitch Regina’s fancy violet bathsalts and seen her face leering out of one of theirs—”

  “Ruth!”

  “It’s the solemn truth. And something else,” she said, drawing a deep breath that made her rib cage rise. “There’s been times when I’ve heard the rustle of her dress, or her laugh floating down the stairs—that evil sniggering laugh! God knows I know her voice well enough and that laughter’s a living thing that can move around corners or travel on a straight course same as the smell of baking bread rising out of the oven.”

  Her face had gone dark, her mouth was knit in a tight line, and I knew she never expected me to believe these things. She saw me as a man of science and I think part of her hoped, wished I’d say anything—no matter how harsh or insulting—and pull her away from the thrall of her fancies.

  “I’ve seen her too,” I said. But before I could say more, Ellie was beginning to stir uneasily.

  “She’s coming round,” I said. Her eyelids were fluttering, her face, which had been slack and expressionless was beginning to show the discomfort of pain at a low level awareness.

  Some part of Ellie seemed to know. And the first thing we saw was her hand dabbling and making passes over the vacant spot that began just below her groin; then from six inches away, her half-sleeping hand traced the carved out space moving up toward her hip—where she had been joined with Abby.

  “Unnnnnhhhhh” a deep groan escaped her.

  She began to cough and hack so fiercely my mind jumped immediately to hypostatic pneumonia. She’d been lying on her back too long. I was afraid her lungs had filled with fluid. She coughed again. Her left hand dove toward her groin and her eyes flew open.

  “My leg, my leg,” she cried out. Her small cat face was a mask of terror. Ruth’s big hand was digging in Ellie’s shoulder, and over and over she was mindlessly crooning, soothing, “Sssh, sssh, there now, there now, get a grip, child.”

  “My leg!” She burst into a terrible spate of weeping that made her cough harder and gasp for breath. Her red hair clung to her forehead in sweaty strings. She could not stop crying, and I believe the truth of the matter was so awful, she could not, would not, did not want to accept it. She tried to sit up. Her hand was clutched against the heavy wad of dressing, the dead end of what had been the very top of her thigh—and more. “No,” she screamed. “No! No! Not my whole leg!”

  Ruth tried to hold her back, but Ellie catapulted forward sitting up and instantly all three sets of our eyes were riveted on the thick, heavy dressing rising vertically in place of where her leg had been.

  “I want my mother,” she shouted. “I hate you—I hate you! And I want my mother!”

  “Ellie!” Ruth’s eyes went wide, her voice was a strangled plea. “No—don’t say it! Take it back, take it back quick!”


  “Mother!” Ellie screamed again.

  Not three seconds went by that I did not see a dead calm steal into Ellie’s eyes and then, Regina’s hard, crueler features moving over the child’s face. Her hair went the darker shade of mahogany. Her form filled out; there were breasts pushing up the broad white hem of the sheet.

  My eyes went wide, and I’m certain I gasped, called out, “Ruth, Ruth do you see that?” My own breathing filled the well of my ears with an alien sound. I don’t know what she said in reply. My gaze was fixed.

  Because most unbelievably of all, beneath the thin film of the bleached cotton sheet, a long shapely woman’s leg—a true phantom limb—filled out the sad void that was the missing space of Ellie’s stump.

  ***

  “Get out, Ruth,” Regina hissed through bared teeth, a clenched jaw. “Get out, now.” Her voice had a thick timbre, it rumbled deep in her throat, the hideous bubbling sound of someone speaking through a clot of mucous—as if she had to learn to use Ellie’s voice box. But Regina’s dark jade eyes were very bright with malice.

  I watched her swing her legs sideways. I felt my heart starting in my chest. Regina’s bare feet flapped against the floor. Then she began to move woodenly away from the bed, as if she were not quite used to manipulating this surgically impaired body, this child’s form. Her arms were held out stiffly, her legs gave way to a lurching gait.

  Ruth wasn’t fooled. “Where’s Ellie now, Regina?” she said. Her voice was as stern and uncompromising as I’d ever heard it.

  Regina’s laugh was hollow. “Inside me. Thrilling to the movement.”

  “Let her go,” Ruth said. “She’s just a child!”

  “My child. And therefore mine to do with, just as I please.”

  “No one owns anyone else, Regina.”

  “I owned you, Ruth. Didn’t I?” Her eyes narrowed, her mouth narrowed to a red slash—a terrifying imitation of a smile. “Why don’t you tell Stuart about it, hmmm?” She flung out one hand limply.

  Ruth winced. Her face went the color of old brick. She cringed, her shoulders turning in on themselves. “No,” she gave out a soft gasp.

  “No, you won’t tell—or no, you don’t believe I owned you?” Regina was very calm now—as if she might begin doing nothing more important than filing her nails or sipping tea. ” ‘A plain woman, whose body was all right but the young men of Poughkeepsie said my face could stop the court house clock,’” she mocked. “Oh yes,” Regina went on. “Ellie might have been unconscious, but I heard every word you said.”

  Ruth shook her head, her hands clenched into fists at her sides.

  “Tell him, Ruth,” Regina brayed, throwing her head back. “Tell him where I found you and what you were doing!” She turned to me. “And to think you were worried about her finding stains on the nursery sheets,” she tssked. “Ruth knows all about such stains, don’t you?”

  “That’s enough, Regina!” the older woman shouted. “Shut your filthy mouth!”

  “I daresay your mouth is just as dirty—dirtier, in fact.” Her eyes went the harsh green of glittering emeralds. “Know where I found her? In the county jail. Know why dear, Bible-reading Ruth was there? Because she was running a young Christian girl’s Sunday School. Only the real agenda wasn’t studying what Jesus and Mary did. The real learning took place in Ruth’s bed! A cot in the alcove behind the curtain. Young men, indeed! It was girls you liked the taste of, wasn’t it, Ruthie? Gabriel didn’t know. He was my hired man, and he married her—then he found out though, didn’t he? Didn’t his pals tell him, ‘Gabe you’ve married the female whore of Red Hook.’ Maybe that’s why you never had children of your own—Gabriel certainly liked fucking me!”

  Ruth ran at her. I was too slow off the mark to prevent it. She raised her heavy arms, and it was then I saw she held the glowing kerosene lamp. A groan spiraled out of me, and I leapt forward.

  But not before she’d hurled the light at Regina’s head.

  I never knew if at the last moment some semi-sentient part deep inside herself caused Ruth to change her aim, or whether Regina thwarted it. I saw Regina blink, she stepped aside, and the kerosene lamp whizzed past her striking the large mirror on the opposite wall. The glass exploded outward with a huge crackling noise. Glittering shards danced madly in the air. Then, as if the fiery orange reflection itself held power, the flames and glass streamed back toward Ruth as quick as the furious trail of a burning comet.

  Ruth began to shriek. The top of her head was alight, and in the instant she put her hands to her hair, they caught fire, too. She screamed again.

  I snatched at the bedcovers, wrenching myself so hard I felt my back muscles twist in an agonizing spasm. The thought flashed through my mind that I’d been standing scant inches away from Ruth, that I should be burning, too. But I threw the covers over her head and shoulders, trying to smother the flames. Ruth was coughing and sobbing at the same time.

  “Got you now, got you now,” I called, holding onto her swaying figure and trying to half carry, half drag her to the rumpled bed across the dark smoky room. Oh dear Christ, I mourned, inwardly. The smell of charred flesh, hair, wool was thick in the air. Ruth coughed. The wracking sound and her moans were muffled under the heavy pad of the blankets.

  I heard the noisy scuffle of running feet from the second floor, the slam of the cellar door, someone shouting indistinct words. But underneath those sounds and the chaotic whirl of my own madly chattering brain, I heard another: the dark glee of Regina’s low laughter.

  ***

  The door to the office was jerked wide. Andrew and Gabriel crowded the threshold. “What happened, what happened?” the hired man shouted.

  In the glare of the lamp he held high and the sting of my own watering eyes, I saw what he and Andrew found:

  The dark room with its wisps and threads of eddying smoke; Ruth wheezing, sprawled on the bed, her head and face swollen with lump-like blisters, her hands flailing in the drifts and clots of burnt-up hair. And Ellie out of her sick bed and lying right cheek down on the cold floor, her good leg buckled nearly beneath her, the wound of the stump leaking blood and pus.

  - 13 -

  “I ought to send you out of my house this minute, Granville,” Andrew said.

  It was a half hour after he and Gabriel had stormed into the office. Ruth lay anesthetized between us on the table.

  I didn’t answer. I knew whatever I said would only make him angrier. But in his voice I heard his belief that if I’d watched Ellie more closely she’d never have lost her leg, that she would not have been lying on the floor. Worse, I heard his accusation that it was somehow my fault that Ruth had been so grievously injured.

  He passed a trembling hand over his wet brow. I saw his drink-bleared eyes go out of focus and his attempt to bring himself back to mental alertness. His gaze sharpened, but I knew he’d come to the stage where he didn’t trust himself or his own judgment; no matter how incompetent he thought I was, I was sober.

  “I ought to hang up my shingle, turning Ruth Wickstrom over to a hack like you….”

  I looked down over the rim of my cotton mask; her normally expressive face was hidden under the mucky swamp of the burns. Her nose was putty melting toward her slab of a chin. There were only narrow blackened remnants of her lips; I knew that whatever reconstructive surgery I could manage there would be nothing more than two rubious lines of scarified flesh—nothing to what human lips were at all.

  “All right,” he glared at me. “Just do it.”

  I nodded at Andrew Saunders, and I picked up the enucleator—never letting myself think about what a cold term, what a nasty instrument it was—then inserted it like a pry lever. A moment later, the white, fishy heat-boiled globe that had been Ruth’s brown right eye was cupped between my gloved fingers.

  - 14—

  A week later Ruth was conscious. It was twilight; the room was gray with shadows when I went to her sickbed in Saunders’s office to check on her. Her brown mummy claw of a hand sna
tched at my white medical coat as I bent over her.

  “You got to get em out Stuart, or go yourself.” She stared hard up at me.

  “You hearing this?” she asked. Her voice was more hiss than whisper, the result of her burnt lungs. Her lips had trouble making the words.

  “Yes,” I said. “But how?” I let Ruth’s hand dawdle in the folds of fabric coating my chest.

  “Send em to school—somewhere,” she stopped to catch her breath. “Abby’s smart. And they’ll take Ellie, even if she’s a cripple, to get Abby on board. There’s not many places’ll scruple at double tuition. You send ’em on to one of them schools in the city, or if old Andrew balks at that, one of the girls’ seminaries in Connecticut or Massach—“she paused, and I heard her breath whistling in her throat.

  “There now—easy,” I soothed.

  “You’re a fool, Stuart Granville.” It wasn’t quite a yell; she couldn’t manage that. But her good eye bored into me. “Don’t you know now they’re separated Regina can take ’em when she will? Don’t you know as a spirit she’s bound to the place? But she’ll get stronger, and if she does, sure as Satan, she’ll burrow down inside their minds. What then, Stuart. What then, henh?” She coughed, but she was too weak even to stifle it with her fist. I touched my hand to her mouth tenderly. “Andrew will never let them go—he’ll say he hasn’t got the money, and he’ll resent me for interfering,” I said. I stroked the cropped wiry mat of her hair.

  “I’ll tell you what then,” she went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “Regina will win. She’ll get so strong that whether they’re here inside the house or not, it’ll be the same to her.” She licked her lips. She didn’t ask, but I poured from the pitcher and handed her the glass. She sucked the wax-coated paper straw briefly. “Thanks,” she muttered. “You’re a good nurse.” We both smiled at that. Ruth’s smile was the light in her good eye—her lips were too raw to stretch into something we all take for granted.

  “I turned it over and over in my mind a thousand times. What else have I got to do—lying the livelong day in a bed? I think maybe Regina could only come through because the girls were separated. A body can’t be in two places—two minds at the same time. And even a spirit might be bound by the same law.”